


ARADIA => ESCAPE THIS PLACE

by noodlerdoodler



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 1940s (ish) era, Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Delusions, Gen, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:11:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4871239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlerdoodler/pseuds/noodlerdoodler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"As much as you would love to LEAVE THIS PLACE, you can't. They lock the windows here and you could have sworn that you saw boards on the windows on the ground floor. You have to attempted to break through the windows before but you don't have the strength. You are, after all, only a nine year old girl and you shouldn't be breaking glass windows in the first place."</p><p>~</p><p>A Fran Bow inspired AU, where Aradia hears "voices of the dead" and tries hard to escape the asylum, that she isn't sure why she's trapped in. Also featuring: Karkat, Kanaya and Eridan as Aradia's delusions and Sollux, Feferi and Terezi as other patients.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ARADIA => ESCAPE THIS PLACE

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to practise writing a more gothic style story and this happened. It focuses mainly on Aradia because I never write her but everybody else tagged is included! 
> 
> (BEING REWRITTEN PROBABLY)

ARADIA => Go Outside. 

As much as you would love to LEAVE THIS PLACE, you can't. They lock the windows here and you could have sworn that you saw boards on the windows on the ground floor. You have to attempted to break through the windows before but you don't have the strength. You are, after all, only a nine year old girl and you shouldn't be breaking glass windows in the first place. 

ARADIA => Explain The Situation. 

Your name is ARADIA MEGIDO and you are currently staying in a mental hospital, somewhere far away from the BIG CITY that you used to live in. You miss the TREES that grew beside your old house and your MOTHER but more than anything else, you miss being able to ADVENTURE. There is nowhere to ADVENTURE inside the asylum. They lock your bedroom door during the LONG LONG nights. 

Tonight is one such night and though you can hear the faint sound of SCREAMING somewhere nearby, you are sure that it's inside your own head and that nobody is actually in danger. (Especially not you.) Why would anyone be in danger in a mental hospital? After all, it's a place to put people back together not to break them apart. You assure yourself that the screaming is just in your head but it seems ridiculously L O U D today, like they're screaming in your ears instead of your brain. The SPIRITS must be unsettled. 

You decide for whatever reason that today is a good day to try out the idea that you've been thinking about for a short while. Digging around in the pocket of your skirt, you draw out the old butter KNIFE that you stole from the kitchen the other day. You WERE caught sneaking around but you WEREN'T caught slipping the mention knife into your pocket. They don't tend to notice things like that. It's pretty blunt but it must be good for something. 

ARADIA => Inspect The Lock On Your Bedroom Door. 

Almost there, just a little to the left.... YES! It takes a little bit of working and twisting the dull blade but you manage to crack the lock on your door open. Unfortunately, you also manage to snap the knife in the process and it's useless without the blade. You decide to kick it under the rug and progress without the stupid old thing. Can't even hold up against a dumb lock... What a useless piece of rubbish.... Something stronger would have been better. 

Outside your room, the corridor is LONG and DARK. They don't have enough candles to light it at night and have no reason to, since nobody is meant to leave their rooms during this time. Maybe not even nurses. You have no idea why this rule is in place but you suspect it's to stop people from ADVENTURING. Your mother always said that CURIOSITY killed the CAT. You think this means that POKING AROUND will get yourself in BIG, BIG, T R O U B L E. 

But the screaming inside your own head is loud and you think that perhaps you might need some more of that MEDICINE that they've been giving you. They're very pretty little pills that you've been having; PINK and WHITE! Not to mention that they make the voices go away for a little while. The only bad thing is that they make you feel quite TIRED and quite SICK. They also make you not want to eat. They don't let you take them very often because of this. 

ARADIA => HEY, LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY ELSE IS AWAKE. 

Feeling ever so adventurous, you walk down the corridor towards where the light is SHINING under a door. You don't hesitate to think about whether or not this is a good idea because one of the more rational VOICES in your head is advising you that it is, in fact, a great idea. Not to mention, you are CURIOUS to see who else is awake this late at night. 

The only time you do pause is to peer out of the window into the DARKNESS outside and the MONSTERS that lurk in it- you wave cheerily to them, even if you can't see them, because you know they're there. You can't see very much, only the high gates that are TRAPPING you inside and the stars that seem ever so clear. There's nowhere near as much fog or nasty gases as there was back in the BIG CITY you used to live in. Upon noting this, you continue down the corridor to the door and push it open. 

Inside the room looks very much like yours; a bed, a small cupboard and some personal belongings in a small box. Unlike your room, there are a handful of small framed pictures balanced on top of a shelf and a not-so-small girl is sat against the wall and playing with a stuffed toy. You think the toy might be some kind of fish but it looks ugly and not very pretty at all. The girl seems to think otherwise, as she is cooing over it. 

"You're a good cuttlefish, aren't you? Aren't you pretty? Don't worry, I'm going to take very good care of you! I'm going to look after you like I look after all your friends!" 

ARADIA => Don't Just Stand There. Introduce Yourself! 

You do as the voice inside your head tells you and introduce yourself. 

"My name is Aradia. I have the room down the hall from here. I'm out on an adventure!" 

The sound of your voice seems to jolt the girl from her playing and she looks up at you. 

"Hello, Aradia! I'm Feferi! Adventuring sounds exciting! Where are you going?" 

"I don't know just yet. Hey, don't they look your bedroom door at night?" 

"Why would they lock my bedroom door at nighttime?" Feferi looks confused. 

"They lock my bedroom door. I think it's to stop me from adventuring." 

"Oh, well that's not very nice!" Feferi looks unhappy, "You shouldn't let them do that." 

"I shouldn't." 

ARADIA => You Shouldn't. 

=> BUT YOU HAVE TOO, IDIOT.

=> But You Shouldn't. 

=> wwell maybe you-

You press your hands over your ears in attempts to SHUT the VOICES out. Sometimes, they get too LOUD and DISTRESSING and make you want to CRY. You never C R Y. Thankfully, your new friend doesn't seem to think of this as odd behaviour and just shrugs and smiles to you. She's playing with the stuffed toy- the "cuttlefish"- again and pretending to make it SWIM through the SEA of carpet. Sitting down beside her, you humour her by watching until you feel like the voices have DIED DOWN a little to a more manageable level. You remove your hands. 

For the first time, you study Feferi properly and take in the dark colour of her skin and the brightness of her clothes. They let you wear your own clothes in here and seem to let Feferi wear as much JEWELLERY as she wants to. To think, she can wear THOSE and you weren't even allowed to bring your favourite ADVENTURING HAT here with you. You miss your hat ALOT sometimes. 

ARADIA => ASK YOUR NEW FRIEND IF SHE CAN SEE THAT.

If she can see what-

Oh. 

That. 

As usual, you aren't surprised to see the large MONSTER that's looming over your new friend but it still makes you shiver a little. Faintly, you swear you can hear it WHISPERING to her. Probably in a made up MONSTER language. She doesn't seem to notice, too busy playing with her cuttlefish and lost in her own world. Feferi has this huge smile spread across her face and it's strange to see one like that in a place like this. It doesn't even look slightly crazed. 

"Aradia, weren't you going adventuring?"

"Actually... I was wondering if you had anything I could take with me." 

"To help with your adventures? Would this do?" From around her neck, she pulls one of the many necklaces. This one has a large pink gem hanging on it and looks expensive but she drops it onto the palm of your hand without so much as a shrug. You clench your hand around it, enjoying the cold feel of it against your warm skin. Warm skin is living skin. Dead skin is very cold. Feferi feels cold. You slip the necklace into your pocket. 

"Thank you, Feferi." 

"It's nothing, really!" 

ARADIA => see wwhich other rooms you can get into. there must be some others come on. 

Indeed, the room across the hallway from Feferi's pushes open easily to reveal another terribly empty room. There's drawings papering the walls, as if attempting to cover up the peeling white paint. All the drawings are aggressively scribbled and don't seem to make any coherent sense or patterns. You narrow your eyes at them and then, at the boy who's sat on the floor and drawing even now. DRAWING, DRAWING, DRAWING, probably to make everything GO AWAY.

"Would you like a crayon?" He asks you, not even looking, and though his voice is croaky and bad sounding, you realise that "he" is in fact a "she". She's wearing pants and has messy looking hair, which is probably why you got confused about her. 

"Pardon?"

"Would you like a crayon?"

"Yes. Can I have the red one please?"

"You can't have any crayons." The girl seems to decide suddenly, clutching her collection of crayons quite close to her heart, and peering at you suspiciously through her red tinted glasses. She's as scruffy looking as her drawings and wearing bright colours but there isn't much else to say about her. She has a lot of marks on her face, around her eyes, but her glasses hide most of them. 

"But you just said I could have one." 

"Not the red ones." The girl looks ready to bite. 

ARADIA => HEY. TELL THIS GIRL YOUR NAME TOO. 

"I'm Aradia." 

"Hey... Aradia..." The girl is still staring suspiciously, teeth bared and crayons being clung too. 

"Can I please have a black crayon if I can't have a red one?"

The girl seems to consider this for a long moment, weighing the offer as she looks down at the crayons. Then, she seems to come to the realisation that this isn't a fair deal and she's not kind enough to share willingly. She'll only give if she gets in return. You watch this thought flicker across her face and watch her shift her weight to sit on her knees. 

"You can have the crayon. But only if you get me something." 

"What do you want?" 

"The lady in the office took my scalemate! My dragon! Lemonsnout!" She seethes, looking ready to throw a tantrum at the very memory of it. She's clutching her crayons so hard that some of them have snapped in half, falling to the ground in pieces. Realising that there won't be any left for you to borrow, you gently pat the girl on the shoulder and shush her. This seems to calm her reasonably. 

"I'll get your scalemate back for you." 

"Really?"

"Yeah. It'll be an adventure. You'll give me a crayon after, right?" 

"Of course, of course." The girl leaps to her feet and pushes her chubby hands into your back, shoving you eagerly towards the door like she can't wait to get rid of you, "Hurry back with my scalemate, Aradia!" You don't even get her name but you're already risking your neck with the scary nurses and guards and the risk of being OUT at NIGHT and heading down the twisting corridors to rescue the SCALEMATE. Whatever the hell a SCALEMATE is. 

ARADIA => rescue that stupid dragon thin' from the office. 

"It's harder than it sounds." You whisper, noticing how the guard is lurking outside the office. You're going to have to crawl on your hands and your knees and even then, you're at strong risk of getting CAUGHT. You drop onto all fours as quietly as you can and whisper a small prayer, touching the crucifix around your neck. Your mother gave it to you to DRIVE THE DEVIL OUT OF YOU. You think about your mama every time you feel it against your skin. 

The man is falling asleep, luckily for you, and it's much too easy to crawl past him to the office door. Unfortunately, you find the door itself to be locked and pushing it does nothing towards opening it. Snores come from the man behind you as you sit back on your heels and huff, thinking of what to do. There must be a key for the door but upon inspection, the guard doesn't seem to have it. Somebody else must have taken it already. You think you know who. 

ARADIA => fine. go talk to that captor kid then. 

Sollux Captor is a resident of the downstairs of the asylum, where they keep most of the boys. It's hard to sneak down the crumbling stairs, being careful not to make a LOUD noise on the creaking stairs, but it's much harder to crawl past the nurse who is sitting in the office. She seems to be doing some late night work while she casts a weary eye over the corridor. She doesn't seem to notice you. If she DOES, she says NOTHING. 

You know where Sollux's room is because it's the end of the corridor. You're good friends with him because he's the only other person that can hear VOICES like you do. But he can only hear the VOICES of people that have JUST DIED. The other day, he started screaming at you that you were dead and he'd killed you and the doctor had to restrain him from HURTING YOU. You were scared. You hope he's feeling a little BETTER now. 

Knocking isn't worth the risk so you just push the door open and hope that he's both decent and awake. One out of two isn't bad but you do have to shake him awake in his bed and shush him before he can start screaming. His eyes snap open alarmingly quickly and he swipes at you, teeth bared ready to snap. He seems to calm down when he sees that it's you. 

"AA, how are you?" His voice is little more than a whisper, as he sits up. 

"Did you take the key from the guard?"

"Yes." He gets a crooked little grin on his face, "You think they noticed yet?" 

"I don't think they'd suspect you. You're nowhere near as shifty looking as Serket." 

"I suppose you're right. Was that all you wanted?"

"May I please have the key? I need to rescue something for a friend." 

"Which friend?"

"The girl that looks like a boy and colours a lot." 

"You mean Terezi?" 

"Sure. Can I have the key now?" 

With an exaggerated sigh, he slides out of bed and you get to your feet. And he pushes the mattress up, revealing his small stash of stolen items underneath, none of which are particularly special. Most of them are just little trinkets. You notice the rusting silver key, which he takes out and gives to you, before letting the mattress fall back into place. 

"Good luck with your adventuring." He says, clearly eager to get back to sleep. He's told you before that he loves to sleep because of the two strange PLANETS that he visits in his sleep. PROSPIT and DERSE. You told him that he was CRAZY and he'd grinned at you and returned the remark. Now, you just wave as you slip out of the room. 

ARADIA => Please Rescue That Silly Scalemate Now. 

The guard is still asleep as you slip past him and unlock the door with a gentle click of the key in the lock. It makes a CREAKING noise as it opens but the guard doesn't seem to stir, only snoring a little louder and making you giggle. You head into the room, which isn't lit but your eyes quickly adjust well enough. Still, you keep the door OPEN just in case you need to run away from the MONSTERS. 

Tempted to poke around the office, you restrict yourself to the place where they keep confiscated items. You know where it is because they keep your ADVENTURING HAT in here, which you snatch back and put on as soon as you see it. Then, you pick through the rest of the items that you don't care about until you find a stuffed dragon. This must be it. You tuck it under your arm as you head out of the room and shut the door behind you. 

ARADIA => TAKE THAT STUPID DRAGON BACK. 

The girl - TEREZI - is delighted to be reunited with her scalemate and sandwiches it in a hug between the two of you. She doesn't smell too good but you don't comment, since you don't like to be rude if you can help it. There's a big toothy grin on her face, when she pulls back, and she gives you an entire box of spare CRAYONS. You wonder where she got so many, as you slip them into your POCKET.

"I like your hat." 

"Thanks. It's my adventuring hat." 

"Are you going adventuring?" The girl asks curiously. 

"Yes. I think I'm going to try and get outside tonight." 

"Wow!" Terezi sits down to continue colouring, not looking startled by this; people try to escape all the time but nobody gets very far, "Good luck with that, Aradia!" 

"I'll come back for everybody here some day. But first, I have to get out myself." 

"Don't bother coming back for me." The girl says, brightly, "This place is better than home. There's dragons here and people don't sleep for so long."


End file.
